1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a decorative lighting apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In JP-A-2014-154298, a lighting apparatus for a vehicle is disclosed. The lighting apparatus includes a light source, a pillar-shaped light guide that causes emitting light from the associated light source to be incident into one end surface and then guides the light therein to emit the guided light towards a front of the lighting apparatus by a plurality of light controllers formed on a side thereof, and a lens disposed in front of the light guide. The lens has a thick convex part that has a rectangular shape in longitudinal section, guides the light emitted from the light guide and then emits the light to the front of the lighting apparatus. A front member is disposed in front of the lens to cover a connection part between the lens and the lamp body. The convex part is exposed from the front member.
According to JP-A-2014-154298, the light guide and the lens are separate structures and are arranged to be spaced apart from each other. Therefore, since some of the emitting light of the light guide is reflected from an incident surface of the lens and thereby all of the emitting light of the light guide may not be incident into the lens, the efficiency of utilizing the emitting light of the light source is lowered and consequently it is difficult to obtain bright illumination.
Further, since the light guide is visible from the outside of the lighting apparatus for the vehicle through the lens, the appearance of the lighting apparatus is undesirably poor.
Moreover, JP-A-2014-154298 is problematic in that it is necessary to separately manufacture the light guide and the lens and then assemble them, manufacturing cost is high.